OCEANIC MAMMALS 539 



present time, but in 1904 I had a report of one killed in the 

 Bimini Islands on the western edge of the group. Of course, 

 it may have come over from the Florida coast. Among the 

 Greater Antilles they were formerly present in some numbers 

 on the coasts, at river mouths, and about the small outlying 

 islands. Gundlach in 1877 wrote that around Cuba, though 

 formerly abundant, they were then much reduced but not rare, 

 though difficult to secure; at the present day, however, they 

 are said to have become very scarce. Gosse and Hill (1851) 

 speak of them as present in small numbers about Hispaniola, 

 where in the eastern part of Haiti Hill had seen them about the 

 mouth of the Yasica River. It is supposed, too, that the three 

 "mermaids" that Columbus reported near Punta Roxa were 

 manatees, the first record of the species in literature. In 

 Oviedo's history there is a further account of the manatee, 

 with which Columbus on his fourth voyage, in 1502, had then 

 become more familiar. The translation of Herrera speaks of it 

 as "a new sort of Fish, which was a considerable advantage to 

 them" and relates the story of a tame one kept by the Cacique 

 Carametex in a pond for 26 years; "it grew tame and sensible 

 and would come when call'd by the name of Mato, which 

 signifies Noble." In those times its flesh was eaten by the 

 natives as attested by bones in their kitchen middens. On the 

 north coast of Puerto Rico the town of Manati is said to have 

 derived its name from the former abundance of the animal in 

 nearby waters. According to Barrett (1935) their local disap- 

 pearance here is due to the silting-up of the waters as well as 

 to killing for meat and other products, so that "they now 

 graze on bottom-growing marine plants in the shallow water 

 one to two miles off shore, instead of on the malojillo grass" 

 (Panicum) in the brackish or fresh waters along the coast. To 

 the eastward of Puerto Rico I have found little evidence of its 

 presence; but Miller (1918a) has recorded its bones dug up 

 from a kitchen midden on St. Croix. Among the Lesser 

 Antilles it seems not to occur at present and perhaps does not 

 find suitable conditions there. In the middle of the last cen- 

 tury, Gosse and Hill (1851) speak of it as frequenting the shores 

 of Jamaica, but at that time it was evidently not very common, 

 for they especially give an account of one with measurements, 

 which became tangled in a fish net at Savanna-le-Mar; another 

 at Spanish Town in 1848, that measured 10 feet long; and 



